Advanced english grammar for ESL learners mark lester

Advanced English Grammar for ESL Learners Advanced English Grammar for ESL Learners Advanced English Grammar for ESL Learners Second Edition Mark Lester New York Chicago San Francisco Athens London Ma.

English Grammar

for ESL Learners

Advanced English Grammar for ESL Learners

Second Edition

Mark Lester

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The spelling and pronunciations of regular nouns

Irregular plurals of English and Latin origin

Noncount nouns

2 Possessive nouns and personal pronouns

The correct forms of possessive nouns and personal pronounsThe different meanings of possessive nouns and personal pronouns

Possessive formed with of

3 Articles and quantifiers

Articles

Quantifiers

4 Adjectives

Forming the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives

Deriving adjectives from verb participles

II Verbs and Verb Tenses

Diagnostic exercises

5 Verb forms and tenses

Rule #1: The first verb, and only the first verb, is tensed

Rule #2: All verb constructions except for the simple present andsimple past consist of two verb components

Rule #3: If both the perfect and the progressive aspects are used inthe same verb sequence, the perfect always comes first

6 Talking about present time

The present and present progressive tenses

The present perfect tense

7 Talking about past time

The past tense

The past perfect tense

8 Talking about future time

Using the present and present progressive tenses for future time

9 Causative verbs

Older causative verbs

More modern causative verbs

10 The passive

How the be passive is formed

Reasons for deleting the agent

Get passives

III Clauses and Phrases

Diagnostic exercises

11 The structure of adjective clauses

The internal structure of adjective clauses

Creating and moving relative pronouns

Deleting relative pronouns

Moving objects of prepositions

12 Restrictive and nonrestrictive adjective clauses

The differences in meaning between restrictive and nonrestrictiveadjective clauses

The reduction of adjective clauses to participial phrases

Practice Makes Perfect: Advanced English Grammar for ESL Learners is

designed to help advanced-level learners gain control over difficult areas ofEnglish grammar This book is not a systematic treatment of all areas ofEnglish grammar Instead, it deals in depth with selected grammar topicsthat pose special problems for nonnative speakers These topics fall intotwo areas: (1) areas of grammar that are the source of persistent error and(2) areas of grammar that are so complex that even advanced nonnativespeakers almost always avoid them

Examples of the first type of persistent error would be using wrongarticles, misusing the present and present progressive tenses, confusingpresent and past participles of verbs used as adjectives, and using the wrongrelative pronoun in adjective clauses

Examples of the second type of constructions that are avoided because

of their complexity would be gerunds and infinitives used as nouns,

participial phrases, and wh- infinitive phrases.

Each topic is explained in detail, often going far beyond what would befound in a more general grammar book My hope is that by fullyunderstanding the technical grammatical issues involved, you will feelmuch more confident in using these difficult constructions Each bit ofgrammatical analysis is supported by a series of practice exercises that willhelp you gain practical control over the issues covered in the analysis

New to this second edition, each of the three parts of the book beginswith a set of diagnostic exercises These exercises cover the main topics ineach chapter, with answers to all questions given at the end of the exercises.Use any wrong answers to identify topics that you need to pay specialattention to

English Grammar

for ESL Learners

NOUNS, PRONOUNS, AND

NOUN MODIFIERS

Diagnostic exercises 1

These exercises cover the main topics in chapters 1–4; the answers to allquestions are given at the end of the exercises Use any wrong answers toidentify topics that you need to pay special attention to

1

Chapter 1 Noun plurals

Draw a line through the incorrect words or phrases and write the correctedform below the incorrect one If there is no error, write “OK.”

1 It took me three trys to get the program to run.

Chapter 2 Possessive nouns and personal pronouns

Draw a line through the incorrect words or phrases and write the correctedform below the incorrect one If there is no error, write “OK.”

1 I couldn’t find my fathers’ new telephone number.

Chapter 3 Articles and quantifiers

Draw a line through the incorrect words or phrases and write the correctedform below the incorrect one If there is no error, write “OK.”

1 We should have some answer by the end of the day.

Diagnostic answer key 1

Chapter 1 Noun Plurals

1 It took me three trys tries to get the program to run.

See Plural of regular nouns, page 11

2 You can never have enough informations information.

See Noncount nouns, page 18

3 The company’s gradual accumulations accumulation of bad debts

debt led to disaster

See Noncount nouns, page 18

4 The school is having a fund raiser to buy arts art by local artists.

See Noncount Nouns, page 18.

5 Please write down the ages of all your childrens children.

See Irregular plural of English origin, page 14

6 We have to raise more monies money.

See Noncount nouns, page 18

Chapter 2 Possessive nouns and personal pronouns

1 I couldn’t find my fathers’ father’s new telephone number.

See Possessives of nouns, page 21

2 All of the student’s students were given new ipads.

See Possessives of nouns, page 21

3 In general, womens’ women’s shoes are more expensive than mens’

men’s

See Possessives of nouns, page 21

4 Sarahs’ Sarah’s commute is longer than your’s yours.

See Possessives of nouns and personal pronouns, page 23

5 Its It’s going to be a nice day for their picnic.

See Distinguishing between its and it’s, page 25

6 The doctor is concerned about its possible side effects OK

See Distinguishing between its and it’s, page 25

7 I always try to put the key back in it’s its place.

See Distinguishing between its and it’s, page 25

8 Its’ It’s got to be a big problem for them.

See Distinguishing between its and it’s, page 25

9 This is not my phone I think I took theirs by mistake OK

See Possessive pronouns, page 27

10 We cannot meet our deadline with a two months month’s delay.

See Measurement, page 31

Chapter 3 Articles and quantifiers

1 We should have some an answer by the end of the day.

See Using indefinite articles, page 37

2 I don’t think there is some an easy way to say this.

See Using indefinite articles, page 37

3 Fortunately, there was not some any problem installing the new

software

See Using indefinite articles, page 37

4 The athletic records are made to be broken.

See Making categorical statements without any articles, page 43

5 The Asian food often contains a lot of salt.

See Making categorical statements without any articles, page 43

6 I’m afraid I have some a problem with the assignment.

See Using indefinite articles, page 37

7 There was few little love lost between them.

See Using few and little, page 48

Chapter 4 Adjectives

1 We are more busy busier during the school year.

See Comparative and superlative forms of adjectives, page 53

2 The police warned of an escaping escaped criminal.

See Deriving adjectives from verb participles, page 57

3 The contract was in the most tiny tiniest print I have ever seen.

See Comparative and superlative forms of adjectives, page 53

4 His story was really touched touching.

See Deriving adjectives from verb participles, page 57

5 A watching watched pot never boils.

See Deriving adjectives from verb participles, page 57.

6 Breakfast is including included in the price of the room.

See Deriving adjectives from verb participles, page 57

7 We got caught in a driving rain storm OK

See Deriving adjectives from verb participles, page 57

Noun plurals

This chapter deals with three topics: (1) the spelling and pronunciation ofthe regular plural, (2) irregular plurals of English and Latin origin, and (3)noncount nouns, an important group of nouns that are always singular inform but not in meaning

The spelling and pronunciations of regular nouns Spelling

Most regular nouns form their plural spelling by adding -s to the singular

form For example:

box boxes

There is a special spelling rule for the plural of words that end in a

consonant + y: change the y to i and add -es For example:

However, if the y follows a vowel, the y is part of the spelling of the vowel

and cannot be changed For example:

The regular plural has three different pronunciations: /s/, /z/, and / z/

(rhymes with fizz) Which one we use is totally governed by the sound that

immediately precedes it according to the following three rules:

1 If the singular noun ends in a voiceless consonant sound (except a

voiceless sibilant sound like the s in bus or sh in wish), then the plural

is formed with the voiceless sibilant /s/ The voiceless consonants are

spelled p (stop); t (hat); c (comic); ck (clock); k (lake); f (cliff); gh (if pronounced as an /f/ sound as in cough); and th (if voiceless like

path).

2 If the singular noun ends in a vowel sound or a voiced consonant

sound (except a voiced sibilant sound like in fuzz), then the plural is

formed with the voiced sibilant /z/ The voiced consonants are spelled

b (tube); d (road); g (fog), dge (hedge); ve (wave), l (bell); m (home);

n (tune); and ng (ring).

3 If the singular noun ends in a consonant with a sibilant sound, either

voiceless or voiced, then the plural is pronounced as a separate

unstressed syllable / z/ rhyming with buzz The most common sibilant consonants are spelled ce (face); s (bus); sh (dish); tch (watch); ge (page); z (blaze); se (nose).

EXERCISE

1·2

Write the correct form of the plural in the correct column (Hint: Say the words out loud If you whisper or say them to yourself, voiced sounds will be automatically de- voiced so they will sound the same as voiceless sounds.) The first question is done

We need a ten-foot ladder.

Harry is now six foot four inches tall.

A small number of nouns that refer to fish and animals retain an oldzero-form plural that makes plural nouns look just like singular nouns Forexample:

one cod two cod

Since the singular and plural forms of these nouns are identical, the actualnumber of the noun can only be determined by subject-verb agreement or

by the use of articles For example:

Singular The sheep was caught in the

Plural Some sheep stood in the

middle of the road

Three nouns retain the plural ending -en that in Old English was

standard for regular nouns:

brother brethren (see note)

Note: Brethren is used only for members of a religious order or congregation of men The more commonly used plural is brothers.

Finally there is a fourth group of irregular plurals that reflects a

phonological rule in Old English In Old English, the letter f had two

completely predictable pronunciations: /f/ at the beginning and ends ofwords, and /v/ in the middle of words We can still see today this alternationbetween /f/ and /v/ in the singular and plural of most native English words

that end in -f: the f changes to v (reflecting the pronunciation) when we add the -es plural ending and put the f in the middle of the word For example:

Beginning in the Renaissance, English adopted thousands of words directlyfrom classical Latin Often the original Latin forms of the plural were alsoborrowed While the irregularity of Latin grammar is astonishing, there aretwo patterns of forming the plural of Latin nouns that are common enough

to be well worth knowing:

Plurals of Latin nouns ending in -us The plurals of these nouns

typically end in -i For example:

Plurals of Latin nouns that end in -um The plurals of these nouns

typically end in -a For example:

Note: The Latin plural data is used in formal academic and scientific

writing For example:

The data are very clear.

However, in conversation and informal writing, we often use data as a

kind of collective singular For example:

The data is very clear.

EXERCISE

Noncount nouns are names for categories of things For example, the

noncount noun housing is a collective term that refers to an entire category

of places where people temporarily or permanently reside, such as room,

house, apartment, flat, dormitory, condo, tent, and so on The distinctive

grammatical feature of noncount nouns is that they cannot be counted with

number words or used in the plural, as opposed to count nouns, which can

be used with number words and be used in the plural For example:

one flat, two flatsone dormitory, twodormitoriesone condo, two condosone tent, two tentsNote: the symbol X is used throughout the book to indicate that thefollowing word, phrase, or sentence is ungrammatical.

An especially important feature of noncount nouns is that they cannot

be used with the indefinite article a/an because a/an are historically forms

of the number one So, for example we can say a room, a house, an

apartment, and so forth, but we cannot say X a housing.

English has a large number of noncount nouns Most noncount nounsfall into one of the ten semantic categories listed below:

Abstractions beauty, faith, luck

Academic fields chemistry, economics,

physics (see note)

Note: Despite the final -s, economics and physics are singular.

Gerunds (-ing verb forms

used as nouns)

running, smiling, winning

Languages Arabic, English, Spanish

Liquids and gases air, blood, gasoline

Materials cement, paper, wood

Natural phenomena electricity, matter, space

Sports and games baseball, chess, soccer

Weather words fog, rain, wind

EXERCISE

nouns and personal pronouns, and (3) possessives formed with of.

The correct forms of possessive nouns and

personal pronouns

Possessive nouns and pronouns have the same functions but are formed invery different ways

The possessive form of nouns

Up until the sixteenth century the plural -s and the possessive -s were spelled exactly the same way: -s Beginning in the sixteenth century, people

began distinguishing the two different grammatical endings by marking the

possessive -s with an apostrophe For example:

Plural -s boys girls friends schools

Possessive -s: boy’s girl’s friend’s school’s

Note: The origin of this use of the apostrophe is odd In the late middle

ages, people (mistakenly) thought that the possessive -s was a contraction

of his For example, John’s book was thought to be a contraction of John,

his book Thus the apostrophe was introduced to indicate the missing letters

of his in the same way that the apostrophe in doesn’t indicates the missing o

in the contraction of not Despite the nonsensical rationale for this use of

the apostrophe, the idea of using the apostrophe to distinguish between the

two meanings had become firmly established by Shakespeare’s time The use of the apostrophe after the -s to signal the possessive use of the plural

noun did not become universally accepted until the nineteenth century

We now have this apparent three-way distinction among the three forms: plural -s, singular possessive -’s, and plural possessive -s’:

Plural boys girls friends schools

Singular possessive boy’s girl’s friend’s school’s

Plural possessive boys’ girls’ friends’ schools’

While it is correct to call -s’ the plural possessive, it is a mistake is to think of the -’s as the singular possessive The problem with this definition

arises with the possessive forms of irregular nouns that become plural

without adding a plural -s, for example:

As you can see, -’s is used with these plural possessive nouns, not -s’ This

is not some kind of strange exception to the general rule about plurals and

possessives It actually makes perfect sense: if we used -s’ with these irregular nouns, it would mean (incorrectly, of course) that this -s is what

makes these nouns plural Actually, the -s has nothing to do with these nouns being plural; the only function of this -s is to show possession.

A much better way to think of the plural and possessive -s’ is the

following:

PLURAL ONLY POSSESSIVE ONLY

BOTH PLURAL AND POSSESSIVE

Usually -’s is attached to singular nouns However, in the case of irregular nouns, -’s is attached to the plural form to show that the plural form is possessive In other words, -’s means that whatever kind of noun the -’s is

attached to (singular regular noun or plural irregular noun), that noun is

now marked as being possessive The -s’ is really the special case in which the -s is playing two different and unrelated roles at the same time: (1)

making the noun plural and (2) making the noun possessive This analysiswill ensure that you will always use the right form for both regular andirregular nouns

EXERCISE

2·1

Fill in the correct forms of the plural and possessives An example is provided.

teacher teacher’s teachers teachers’

The possessive form of personal pronouns

Like other personal pronouns, the possessive pronoun has two numbers(singular and plural) and three persons: first person (speaker); secondperson (person spoken to); and third person (person or thing spoken about).Possessive personal pronouns differ from possessive nouns in that there aretwo distinct forms for each possessive pronoun One form functions as anadjective; that is, the pronoun modifies a following noun The other formfunctions as a true pronoun; that is, the pronoun stands by itself in place of

a noun Here is an example using the first person singular pronoun:

Adjective function That is my coat.

Pronoun function That coat is mine.

The two forms are not interchangeable:

X This is mine coat.

X That coat is my.

There is no standard terminology for the two different pronounfunctions In this book we will refer to possessive pronouns that function as

adjectives as adjectival possessive pronouns We will refer to possessive pronouns that function as true pronouns as pronominal possessive

pronouns Here is a complete list of both types of possessive pronouns:

VOCABULARY

Possessive pronouns

ADJECTIVAL FORM PRONOMINAL

FORM

First person my mine

Second person your yours

Third person his his

Plural

First person our ours

Second person your yours

Third person their theirs

There are several common mistakes with apostrophes when we use the

possessive pronominal forms that end in -s (yours, hers, its, ours, yours, and

theirs) We so strongly associate apostrophes with possessive noun forms

that end in -s that it is easy to mistakenly extend the apostrophe to possessive pronouns that also end in -s For example:

I found John’s books X Did you find your’s?

Our friends’ reservation is for Tuesday X When is their’s for?

Distinguishing between its and it’s

One of the most common errors in written English is confusing the third

person singular pronoun its with it’s, the contracted form of it is The major causes of the confusion is that the apostrophe in it’s is associated with the meaning of possession so that as a result we incorrectly use it’s as the

possessive For example:

X My car lost it’s windshield wiper.

X The dog already got it’s treat.

The simplest and most reliable way to distinguish the contracted form of

it is from the uncontracted possessive pronoun its is to see if you can

expand its or it’s to it is If the expanded two-word expression makes sense, then you know that you should use the contracted form it’s If the expanded

two-word expression makes no sense at all, then you know that you aredealing with the possessive pronoun and that you should NOT use theapostrophe

Here is this test applied to the two example sentences above:

X My car lost it’s windshield

wiper

Expanded X My car lost it is windshield

wiper

The expanded form it is windshield wiper makes no sense, so we know that

it’s is actually a possessive pronoun that should be spelled without the

apostrophe:

My car lost its windshield wiper.

Here is the same technique applied to the second example:

X The dog already got it’s

treat

Expanded X The dog already got it is

treat

The expanded form it is treat makes no sense, so again we know that it’s is

really an uncontracted possessive pronoun:

The dog already got its treat.

EXERCISE

Expand the its and it’s in the following sentences and then write the corrected form under the expanded form If the original is already correct, write “OK” under the expanded form The first two questions are done as examples.

Our team lost it’s best player

1 Possession The single most common use of possessive nouns and

pronouns—to show ownership or possession For example:

The family’s car / their car

2 Association People or things associated with the possessive noun or

pronoun For example:

Ralph’s neighborhood / his neighborhood

Susan’s doctor / her doctor

Note: Ralph does not own his neighborhood nor does Susan own herdoctor

3 Attribute A characteristic, part, or feature of the possessive noun or

pronoun For example:

Emily’s red hair / her red hair

Jack’s quick temper / his quick temper

4 Action Some mental or physical action performed by the noun or

pronoun For example:

The editor’s decision / her decision

The company’s determination to succeed / its determination to

succeed

5 Measurement An expression of value or time For example:

The dollar’s declining worth / its declining worth

An hour’s delay / its delay

EXERCISE

2·3

In the blank space after each sentence, write the meaning of the underlined phrase Use one of the following five categories: (1) possession, (2) association, (3) attribute, (4) action, (5) measurement The first question is done as an example.

Alice’s determination grew even stronger (3) attribute

1 The lawyer asked for a week’s postponement of the trial

_

2 Joan’s friends discouraged her from seeing him again.

9 The judge’s decisions are final _

10 Everyone’s investments had declined about 40 percent

_

Possessive formed with of

In addition to the kinds of possessives we have examined so far (which we

will now call s possessives), English can also show possession by the use of the preposition of We will call possessives formed this way of possessives.

Here are some examples where both types of possessives can be used:

S POSSESSIVE OF POSSESSIVE

today’s newspaper headlines the newspaper headlines of

todaythe city’s population the population of the city

Shakespeare’s plays the plays of Shakespeare

The court’s decision the decision of the court

While the s and of possessives mean the same thing and are usually

interchangeable, there are a number of cases in which they are notinterchangeable To a large extent, the meaning of the possessivedetermines whether the two forms of the possessive are interchangeable ornot Let us look at the five different meanings of the possessive we

discussed above and see how compatible they are with the of possessive:

Possession

Here are some examples of possession with both types of possessives

S POSSESSIVE OF POSSESSIVE

the family’s car X the car of the family

the dog’s bone X the bone of the dog

the company’s trucks X the trucks of the company

Clearly, the s possessive is strongly preferred in the meaning of possession.

Associations

Here are some examples of associations with both types of possessives

S POSSESSIVE OF POSSESSIVE

Ralph’s neighborhood X the neighborhood of Ralph

Susan’s doctor X the doctor of Susan

the building’s neighborhood The neighborhood of the

building

With this group, there is distinction between animate and inanimate

possessive nouns When the possessive noun is inanimate, both s and of

possessives are used

Attributes